11. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN GROUND. 



March, 1862. 



WE have sketched, elsewhere, the elements of the beautiful in a 

 tree. Let us glance for a few moments at the beautiful in 

 ground. 



We may have readers who think themselves not devoid of some 

 taste for nature, but who have never thought of looking for beStity 

 in the mere surface of the earth — ^whether in a natural landscape, 

 or in ornamental grounds. Their idea of beauty is, for the most 

 part, attached to the foliage and verdure, the streams of water, the 

 high hiUs and the deep valleys, that make up the landscape. A 

 meadow is to them but a meadow, and a ploughed field is but the 

 same thing in a rough state. And yet there is. a great and endur- 

 ing interest, to a refined and artistic eye, in the mere surface of the 

 ground. There is a sense of pleasure awakened by the pleasing lines 

 into which yonder sloping bank of turf steals away from the eye, 

 and a sense of ugliness and harshness, by the raw and broken out- 

 line of the abandoned quarry on the hill-side, which hardly any one 

 can be so obtuse as not to see and feel. Yet the finer gradations 

 are nearly overlooked, and the charm of beautiful surface in a lawn 

 is seldom or never considered in selecting a new site or improving 

 . an old one. 



We believe artists and men of taste have agreed that all 

 forms of acknowledged beauty are composed of curved lines ; and 

 we may add to this, that the more gentle and gradual the curves, 

 or rather, the farther they are removed from those hard and forcible 



